Oh, no! It turns out that when the federal and state governments ordered everybody to leave New Orleans, “everybody” included “registered sex offenders”! Who knew? And now those registered sex offenders are scattered to the winds!
Thank God some states insisted on forcing evacuees to give them their fingerprints! According to CNN,
In West Virginia, officials said the State Police fingerprinted evacuees when they arrived. They found three people who were ordered to put their names on the state’s sex offender registry.
“That was the situation we were mindful of from the very beginning,” said Lara Ramburg, spokesman for Gov. Joe Manchin. “That’s one of the reasons we kept track of people entering West Virginia.”
Massachusetts conducted criminal background checks and found one man wanted on an outstanding arrest warrant for rape. Two other men would have been required to register but opted to leave the state instead.
I’ll bet the authorities could catch even more registered sex offenders — not to mention muggers, bad-check writers, and “tax cheats” — if they were to require fingerprints and background checks every time people move from state to state. What are they waiting for? Why aren’t they protecting us?